The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6

by Alexander Fullerton

  The slow creep of the approach was galling. He was constantly checking the distance by log as the minutes passed, and he could see signs of the tension in the others. The temptation to increase to half ahead was difficult to resist: using up so much time like this, when you knew that once you’d shed the side-cargo you’d need every minute of it, was maddening. There was also—when your head was close to it—the purring fuse-clock on the flooded side: and your distrust of it.

  It was six forty-two when he saw Scharnhorst’s huge shadow through the viewing port. The time, and the log reading, checked exactly.

  “Come to oh-six-oh, Jazz.”

  “Oh-six-oh …”

  “Target’s in sight.” He tapped the glass. “Forty feet, Louis.” There might be as little as eight fathoms where she was lying. Gimber took his eyes off the starboard side viewing port. It wasn’t easy to stop looking—Scharnhorst, one of the most powerful ships afloat, about a hundred yards ahead and at their mercy.

  Not that “mercy” would be quite the word for it.

  “All right, Bomber. In you go, and flood up. Don’t touch the hatch until I give two bangs on the bulkhead—then carry on out, quick as you like. Take care you aren’t under the side-cargo when you free it—all right?”

  Brazier nodded.

  “Three bangs on the bulkhead would mean emergency of some kind, stop everything and drain down.” Paul leant over with his hand out. “Bomber—good luck, now.”

  “Yeah.” Lanchberry also reached to shake his hand. “Best of British, Bomber.” Gimber was too far away and too busy for handshaking; he said, “Bomber, first night back in Cairnbawn, I’ll buy all your drinks.”

  Brazier grinned round at them all. “Arf, arf.” He backed into the W and D, and slammed its steel door, and they saw the clips hinge over. Lanchberry muttered, “Dunno what we’re fussed about. He’ll do it on his ear.”

  Brazier would have shut and clipped the other door as well, the one leading into the fore end. So he was now enclosed in a space in which he could only crouch with his elbows in contact with both bulk-heads and the closed hatch above his head. He’d put on his mask, and start breathing oxygen from the counter-lung strapped to his chest and fed, via the distributor valve, from the bottles on his back. Equipped like this, being the size he was, he’d only just pass through the hatch when the time came for his exit. In preparation for that outing he’d now be setting about flooding his steel cell by pumping water up from number two main ballast tank. He had a pump-lever in there, similar in operation to the trimming-pump control; the first part of its movement opened the valve from the W and D to the ballast tank and also the vent they shared, and the next started the pump, which was a powerful one producing up to fifty pounds to the square inch. By now the water would be roaring in, flooding up around him, deafening him with its noise as the level rose and the pressure increased. He’d adjust his flow of oxygen, the pressure of it in the lung, to balance that rising pressure. The flooding process lasted about four minutes, unpleasant minutes—and more so than usual, here in seventy degrees north latitude, by the fact of it being only fractionally above freezing point. The worst moment came when the inrush of water, having already closed over Brazier’s head, hit the roof of the chamber—the underside of the hatch. At this point the vent lost the battle and pressure jumped suddenly to equal sea-pressure outside. For the diver it was like being slammed against a wall. Brazier would have softened the blow, and saved the counter-lung and his own lungs from being squeezed flat, by stopping the pump just before the chamber filled.

  Those controls inside the W and D were duplicated here in the control room. You could do all of it from here, except of course for opening the hatch. That had to be done by the man in the chamber. When the time came he’d reach up, grab the central handwheel above his head and wrench it round so that the dogs would disengage on the rim and allow him to push it up. Brazier wouldn’t be doing that yet: he’d be hunched in there now, enclosed in icy water under pressure, waiting for Paul’s signal.

  Paul waited too—watching the shadow fill the viewing port and darken, its wavy edges firming as the midget crept in under it. Scharnhorst was nearly 750 feet long and 100 in the beam; she carried twelve-inch armour on her sides, but the vast expanse of underwater hull now exposed to X-12 had no such protection.

  Fifteen hundred men up there inside her. Probably having breakfast.

  Rippling silver ended where her great bulk shaded the water under it. The approach had been at an angle of thirty degrees to the battleship’s fore-and-aft line, and the small alteration of course he’d made five minutes ago would have brought them in just about amidships, under that funnel with its rakish cap. It was probably the best place to leave a single charge, he thought. If X-10 had placed—or was placing—her two side-cargoes, she’d drop one at each end, a tactic designed to break the ship’s back. Another in the middle, therefore, would make a real job of it.

  “Stop main motor.”

  “Stop … Motor’s stopped.”

  “Port twenty.”

  “Port twenty.” Lanchberry span the wheel. “Twenty of port wheel on, sir.”

  “Take her down slowly, Louis.”

  A nod. Gimber’s left hand moved the pump-lever to port, then centred it again. Forty-two feet. Forty-four …

  “Give her a touch astern.”

  Gimber put the motor to slow astern for just long enough to feel the screw churn, taking the way off her. Looking upwards through the ports it was as if an enormous steel shutter stopped sliding over them. It was lifting now, going out of focus. Gimber had stopped the motor. The gauge showed forty-eight feet—eight fathoms. At fifty-four there was a bump for’ard: she lurched, bumped again.

  Hard. Too hard.

  “Rock.”

  As expected. A crunching sound from under their feet lasted for about ten seconds while she settled. The needle was on fifty-four and a half feet, and there was no movement on it at all now. The fore-and-aft bubble was on the centreline, but she was leaning a few degrees to port, canted by the flooded charge’s weight although not as much as she had been when she’d been waterborne. She’d be resting on her heavy, level keel, kept upright by the buoyancy in her compartments and in some tanks.

  Paul took a wheelspanner from where it was hanging on the deckhead, rapped twice with it on the door of the W and D. The metallic crashes were startlingly loud. Then he went to the stub periscope, the short bifocal one. He was looking into a dim, shifting haze, water and water-movement distorting the overhead view of Scharnhorst’s bilges extending into what looked like miles, wavery like sinews in it flexing themselves. He couldn’t see X-12’s fore hatch until it opened; it was below the periscope’s field of view, set down in a short well inside the casing. But he saw its rim appear now—a curve of black at the very bottom of the glass; the hatch had been flung back, and that was the top edge of the lid standing open. Now Brazier was rising into view, ungainly undersea creature dramatically emerging, rising and inclining forward—this way, leaning towards and over the stub periscope—hooking black rubber-gloved claws into the casing’s apertures to hold itself down and drag itself aft. Boots loud on the casing’s steel, ringing clangs, and bubbles rising in a thin stream from his breathing exhaust.

  Astonishing to think you knew that sinister-looking creature—had talked, eaten and drunk with it.

  “He’s out, and moving aft.”

  They’d have known from the fairy footsteps, but he’d forgotten to tell them, in his own fascination with the sight. Lanchberry said, “He’ll have it done in five minutes. Anyone want to bet?”

  Gimber took him up on it. “I say ten minutes. Starting now. Five bob.”

  “You’re on.”

  The periscope window went black as Brazier loomed over it. Water displaced by that large body’s passage through it danced mirage-like above him. You could hear every shift of the leadweighted boots; other metallic sounds would be from the tools slung on his belt. Paul checked the time:
six fifty-four. Leaving one hour and six minutes to have the job done and get her through the gap to the blind side of the island. It would be all right as long as the Bomber did take as little as five or ten minutes. Paul was at the viewing port, and he could see Brazier handling his line, letting himself down over the side; he’d have secured it to the periscope standard, or thereabouts. Gimber and Lanchberry had both swung round on their seats to watch—or rather, to catch glimpses, which was all you’d get—and Paul stood aside to clear their view. Then Brazier’s body was covering the outside of the port, so there was nothing to be seen at all. Paul had looked round to make some remark to Gimber, when it happened.

  An explosion: like a distant rumble of thunder amplified immediately into a deafening clap of it right overhead. Paul’s thought was, Side-cargo …

  (He was right, although he had no idea at the time whose or where it was. Later reconstruction from sources including German naval logs make it clear that it was the charge left by X-12 herself in Ytre Koven and which should still have had two hours’ delay left on its clock.)

  In the first impact of the shock-wave, Brazier was wiped off the midget’s side. Paul saw him receding into blackness, cartwheeling head over heels; his mask had been blown off and trailed on its pipe. Brazier’s limbs were extended—the legs at any rate in their heavy boots, whirling by centrifugal force as he turned over and over—in an attitude of crucifixion, whirling away. It was more horrible than any of the nightmares, and now X-12 was on the move too, crabbing side-ways, angled over to starboard, at first just sliding but then grating, bouncing, crashing over rock. Paul had been sent flying. Gimber was clinging to his seat but Lanchberry had been ejected backwards, torpedoing head-first into machinery behind his chair. Struggling up, imposed over the sight of Lanchberry’s head gashed and blood streaming in a scarlet curtain over his face was the image still in Paul’s brain of Bomber Brazier in that maelstrom, drowning if the concussion hadn’t already killed him. Which it would have. The boat was on her side, grinding over the rocky bed of the fjord, and the obvious counter-measure—to blow main ballast—wasn’t on the cards, because you’d have been blasting her to the surface under the eyes and guns of fifteen hundred Germans—under Scharnhorst’s guns. Gimber had the pump running on the midships trimming tank; Paul had crawled to the lever to do it himself— acting blindly, on instinct, as it were buried in the noise—and he’d found the lever already over to starboard, Gimber holding it there with one hand and clinging to the hydroplane control with the other. Lanchberry shouted in Paul’s ear, “Blow one and three?” Paul yelled back “No!” He saw astonishment in Lanchberry’s face, and allowed himself second thoughts: you could blow enough ballast out just to get her off the rocks, before she smashed up completely. He’d got himself half to his feet: he shouted “Jazz!” Lanchberry staring at him with a hand to his head and blood still pouring, just about all over him by this time. Paul yelled, “Blow one and three, but only one short guff in each!”

  The motion was easing: these were only dying residues of blast now, and noise diminished with it. Lanchberry opened the two high-pressure blows, paused for a count of three and then jammed them shut again. X-12’s bow lifting: but not her stern … He shouted, “Another guff in three!”

  The angle had increased alarmingly. She was bow-up, with an angle of about twenty degrees on her. Her stern, obviously, was still resting on the bottom—you could hear it, the grinding contact with rock—as if that tank hadn’t been blown at all. Lanchberry had opened the blow again: Paul heard the thump and rush of air through the pipe, then the noise of it escaping, whooshing out. Lanchberry heard it too and shut the blow.

  “Stern tank’s holed.”

  So it could not be blown. A minute ago, in that deafening cacophony, they hadn’t been able to hear the air escaping.

  Gimber had stopped the ballast pump. He saw Paul turn to glance at the position of the lever, and explained, “Wasn’t doing any good.” Pointing at the depthgauge: “Seen that?”

  The needle was static at 238 feet.

  So she’d been washed away from the Aaroy coast into much deeper water. And at 238 feet the pressure would be something like—he forced his stunned brain to work it out—125 pounds to the square inch. It made the prospect of escape by DSEA somewhat unattractive. But X-12 was stuck here, finished; there was nothing to do except abandon her.

  That same sensation swept over him: that this couldn’t be true, couldn’t really be happening—you’d wake up suddenly …

  But it was happening. Had happened. And now had to be coped with. He heard Lanchberry mutter, “Poor old Bomber.”

  The enemy might or might not know there was a submarine down here. It depended on whether those large escapes of air had been seen when they’d frothed the surface.

  Gimber said, “I suppose the side-cargo’s still attached.”

  The time was eight minutes past seven.

  There was an intermittent scraping from the stern, where she was grinding her tail on rock, but also—he was noticing it now for the first time—an internal trickling. He saw Lanchberry also listening to it while he dabbed with a handful of cotton-waste at his gashed head. X-12 resting on her tail, snout pointing upward at the surface, Lanchberry and Gimber both in their seats while Paul crouched with an arm hooked round the barrel of the periscope. Lanchberry said, “Leaking in aft.” His thin lips twisted. “Be bloody amazing if it wasn’t.”

  It would be through some loosened hull-valve, or possibly more than one. It was hardly worth looking for, though, because sooner or later they were going to have to bale out. Sooner, rather than later. But at least with this stern-down angle on her, the water that got in would take a very long time to reach the battery. There’d be no chlorine gassing to worry about, in the short term.

  Small mercies … Particularly as there couldn’t be a long term.

  “DSEA then. This depth’s going to create problems, but …”

  He’d checked. He’d been about to tell them, We’ll go out through the W and D, one at a time. The first step would have been to operate its valves—its connections with number two main ballast—from here in the control room, in order to drain it down. Then each man would have gone out—Gimber first, then Lanchberry, and finally himself, and each of the first two would have had to shut the hatch behind him before allowing himself to float up to the surface with the rubber apron of his set extended, like a parachute in reverse, to slow the ascent and reduce the likelihood of “bends.” But you couldn’t do it—couldn’t use the W and D at all. Because Brazier had left the hatch standing open. Paul remembered it distinctly. It had been only minutes ago, yet already remote in memory—that dreamquality again—but he could see as if he was looking at it now the rim of the open hatch, and then the Bomber like some weird apparition rising out of it, a spectral being from another planet. There was a side thought at this point, a thought within the other one—that the weighted boots and belt would sink the Bomber’s body, hold it down at least for quite a long time … But he’d left the hatch open because he’d been set on doing a quick job out there and getting back inside within minutes.

  Paul hauled himself up to the stub periscope, to check this, but of course at such a depth as this there wasn’t any light to see by. Only the roofing shimmer of the surface.

  “What’s the drill now, skipper?”

  “We can’t use the wet-and-dry, unfortunately. Bomber left it open.”

  A slow blink, slow enough to be a temporary closing of the eyes. Lanchberry said, “Ah.”

  Gimber whispered, “Shit …”

  “So we’ll have to flood her through the seacocks, and use this hatch.”

  “Christ, how long’ll that take?”

  The short answer was too long. For a variety of reasons, none of them hard to see. The system he was proposing just happened to be the only way out there was. They’d strap on their DSEA sets, and start breathing from them when the water got to about shoulder height. Or so high you had to an
yway. You wouldn’t use the sets before you had to, because unlike Brazier’s proper diving gear a DSEA set was only meant to support life in a man on his way up to the surface, and the oxygen capacity was quite limited. The flooding process would be complicated, too, by the midget’s bow-up position. At this angle—if she stayed like this, when she’d taken in that great weight of water—and she might, because the stern compartment would be the first to fill—the air pocket would be up against the top of the W and D bulkhead, not under the hatch as would be normal. The hatch, in fact, would be drowned long before the pressures equalised. That was another factor—the pressure would be huge, really killing, increasing as the flooding continued and finally balanced sea pressure so the hatch could be opened.

  By anyone who was still alive to open it.

  Well—you could open the door to the W and D, at that stage, and use the fore hatch. Easier than having to dive down and locate the main hatch and open it. But exactly the same applied, of course, about equalising pressure. In fact you could open that W and D door now—you could knock its clips off and allow it to fly open with sea at more than a hundred pounds to the inch behind it, and in the second that it opened you’d all be killed by that blast of pressure.

  Hardly profitable.

  Lanchberry answered his own question. His sweater was soaked brownish with his blood. He’d stemmed the flow, with cotton-waste stuck to the gash.

  “Take an hour, or more. Much as two hours, even.”

  Gimber checked the time. Seven-thirteen.

  “Firing-period starts at eight.” He nodded towards the boat’s port side. “And that thing’s set for twenty-five past.”

  At 0800, or at any time thereafter, there could be other side-cargoes exploding. Not that you’d need them, from X-12’s point of view. If she took an hour or more to flood, the three of them would probably be dead from cold long before they’d be in a position to open up and get out. It would have been bad enough for the Bomber in his rubber suit, but without such gear, standing for an hour in ice-water slowly rising until it covered you …